#gyoomiewrites

Perhaps it was inevitable, he reasoned. Marinette was just... different, right from the day they’d first met. There was just something about the way she talked, the way she always looked at the world with her eyes wide and heart unguarded, the comfort the kindness the unyielding sincerity –

Ah, he’s doing it again. Luka stared at his blank music sheet for a few seconds longer, nothing else coming to mind but her, before falling back against his bed with a poof.

Honestly. How was he supposed to get any work done like this.

‘Luka?’

Luka jolted, propping himself up quickly to meet Marinette’s gaze. He almost forgot that he’d invited her over to work on school assignments in his room. ‘Yeah?’

She looked at him, head tilted, pencil poised over the outfit she just sketched. It was for a four seasons project, if he recalled correctly. Spring day. ‘Um, well, it’s nothing much, it’s just – you’ve been sighing a lot today, and you haven’t really touched your sheet...’ More carefully, she ventured, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No,’ Luka said, feeling a slight stab of guilt. He didn’t want to worry her. Reflexively, Luka summoned a smile, bright and impenetrable, only to catch himself.

He didn’t want to lie to her, either.

‘I’m not sure, to be honest.’ Luka looked at his lap. Struggled for the right words, the way he always did. ‘Do you ever just. Have a song stuck in your head on loop?’

‘A song?’

‘Yeah.’

Marinette set her materials aside and turned to face him fully. Attentive. Waiting.

‘It’s a great song,’ he managed to say after a moment. ‘Extraordinary, even. The kind of feel-good music that dreams are made of – something special. But now I can’t get it out of my head, and I can’t get anything done.’

‘Yeah, I know the feeling...’ Marinette smiled, almost rueful in her musings. ‘But still, the tune must be a real earworm to get you all wound up like this.’

He stared at her, taking in the sunlight streaming through the open window, the way it diffused in her hair, soft and glittering. Wound up was an understatement. ‘Yeah, it really is.’

‘Mm, well.’ Marinette pulled her legs up to rest her chin on her knees. ‘Why not let it out once in a while, then?’ At Luka’s blank look, she let out a quiet laugh. ‘I mean, it’s hard, right? Sometimes my brain gets overloaded with ideas too, and I already have, like, a billion pieces to finish. It’s too much. I’m in over my head.

‘So instead, I get a rough sketch out first. It doesn’t have to be pretty or anything, it’s just to get that one thing off my mind. That one thing less off my plate. And if the idea keeps nagging at me, well.’ She shrugged. ‘Add on to it whenever you can. Refine it if you must. And when the time is right, you’ll get to it.’

Huh. It wasn’t quite the same situation, but maybe Marinette had a point. If he wrote down every single stray thought he had about her, condensed them into something substantial, like a confession of some sort –

Should an opportunity present itself, could he tell her how he felt?

‘Um.’ Marinette tucked a wing of loose hair behind her ear, clearly antsy from Luka’s long stretch of silence. ‘Did that make any sense? I’m sorry, please forget what I sa – ’

‘No, no, it made sense! A lot of sense, actually.’ He smiled, kind and reassuring, only for his heart to skip a beat when she smiled in turn. Once again, Luka was reminded of how much she meant to him, a beautiful melody.

He’d find a way to put that melody into words. He’d write notes, if he had to.

But for now, this was enough.

‘Thanks, Marinette.’